


A Real Forest, And You

by stammed_cleams



Category: the adventure zone, the adventure zone graduation - Fandom
Genre: Awkwardness, Comfort, Friendship, Humor, I just feel like these two have chemistry ok, Social Awkwardness, its good shit, struggling to fit in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-16 09:13:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21505450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stammed_cleams/pseuds/stammed_cleams
Summary: The Firbolg has been struggling both with accounting and with what seems like everything else at his school. While his roommates mean well, only one other person understands, and he doesn't even know who they are yet.
Relationships: The Firbolg & The red-eyed entity
Comments: 3
Kudos: 71





	A Real Forest, And You

**Author's Note:**

> hey gang! so heres another one. I just think that the firbolg has some excellent chemistry with the creature in the woods! also i LOVE the sort of awkward foreign exchange student vibe he gives off. i hope things get easier for him as the show goes on!

The Firbolg currently had his head in his hands, long, matted hair spilling out through his fingers. He was sitting on the floor, elbows on his knees and a large textbook with a lined piece of paper atop it in his lap. There was a pencil between the two pages, and it had been there for the past thirty minutes.  
Fitzroy and Argo had been able to enjoy the quiet and get some work done as well, with Argo polishing up a paper for Blame-Taking and Fitzroy quietly focusing on making the lights in a Prestidigitation spell go through intentional patterns, movements, and changes in color and size. Fitzroy, noticing the Firbolg, slowly allowed his lights to flicker into nothingness. Several quick looks in the last half hour could tell him that he hadn’t moved at all in a significant amount of time, and turned a page in longer. He wondered if it was rude to bring it up and looked to Argo for some kind of sympathy, but Argo seemed to be in quite the opposite state. He was fixated on his paper, eyebrows creased, constantly erasing and scribbling away, nothing but eagerness and studious focus in his eyes. Fitzroy had been needing an excuse to take a break from his magic practice Flesto had so flippantly assigned, so he took it as an opportunity to make some sort of contact.  
Quietly, he leaned over his double bed, looking down towards the floor to see the Firbolg’s textbook. One of its open pages was covered up by a completely blank piece of lined paper, and the other revealed a mix of paragraphs, numbers, and variables - accounting work, no doubt. Fitzroy, of course, had that class too - the homework was tedious, but not altogether difficult, he thought. As a matter of fact, he considered, quite a while ago both he and Argo had breezed through it, throwing their textbooks aside like it was-  
He looked again to the Firbolg’s dejected state, his ears dipping down with guilt. Ah.  
In an attempt to be friendly, he finally spoke. “Man, that… accounting work sure is a real… a real stickler, huh? Boy Bartholomus… Bartholomus really started us out rough!” he sympathized. The Firbolg didn’t look up, though Argo did, at the sign of conversation.  
“You are lying,” The Firbolg said knowledgeably, “You finished this work a long while ago.”  
“Well, I…” Fitzroy said, embarrassed, “That doesn’t mean I didn’t… well it’s really an unfair standard, you see, because I took the prerequisites, you know, I took two years of pre-accounting in highschool and I’m assuming you… didn’t take those…”  
“I did not,” The Firbolg agreed, “But I… have a think that… perhaps Argo did not take them either.”  
Argo chimed in, putting his own paper aside, “Oh, now don’t use me as comparison! My family were sea traders, if we lost track of a penny our captains would have it in for us! I come from a world of accounting, matter of fact, I probably know more about it than Sir Fitzroy here!”  
“I wouldn’t go that far…” Fitzroy muttered, barely audible, “Might I ask, what’s giving you so much trouble?”  
The Firbolg shook his head. “I… I…” he sighed, a very long and heavy sigh, like a tree in the wind, and his hands covered his face. “The sun… has hardly once set… and already I… am failing. I am not… understanding, I do not- I- I can’t…” He shook his head again, giving up on trying to talk and going silent again. Argo and Fitzroy exchanged helpless looks. They had both heard rumors of what had happened in that class, of the Firbolg’s intense struggle with even the most basic curriculum as the teacher continued to pick on him in the middle of class. It had left both of them somewhat bitter towards Bartholomus, but of course, neither of them knew how to bring it up to him or to the Firbolg.  
Somewhat effortlessly, Fitzroy hopped down from his bed, landing silently beside the Firbolg. He sat down next to him, “Hey, don’t take it so hard… I mean, on my first day I thundered Argo in the nards, as well as all of my potential friends and teachers so… it’s kind of… hard to beat that, isn’t it?” he attempted to encourage. The Firbolg didn’t comment.  
“Hell, I… I could barely pay for a round of drinks! Everybody at this school is filthy rich to me!” Argo commented with an awkward chuckle. The Firbolg looked up for a moment, and there were subtle tears in his eyes, which he quickly wiped away.  
“I am acting… shamefully, please, forgive…”   
“It’s alright, there’s nothing… shameful about it,” Argo said, looking concerned, “Does… does math really upset you this much?”  
The Firbolg shook his head. “Mm…” he said thoughtfully, and rose to his feet, head still slightly ducked so it didn’t hit the ceiling. “You… would not… understand it.”  
Neither Argo nor Fitzroy had any idea how to answer that, so they exchanged helpless looks and allowed the Firbolg to walk out of the room. After all, they wouldn’t understand. Sure, Fitzroy was from a bit of a higher class than most at this school and Argo spent much of his life on a ship, but they both spoke Common. They both understood their peers, they both knew what it was like to live in the real world. Hell, they both knew simple math, and even that was something they’d never considered was a divider between one’s self and other people. But the Firbolg had nothing. No conversation starters, no jumping-off point - nothing.  
It was easy, the Firbolg thought as he walked through the cold dark outside, to assume that he wasn’t particularly sensitive or social, and at this point he knew that most students had. Some were cruel enough to label him a freak, yes, but most just labelled him ‘mysterious’ or something like that, distancing his wants and needs from anything they could possibly understand, picturing him eating leaves and being deep in spirituality and thought. But really, he contemplated bitterly, all he really wanted them to understand was that he was in college and he was awkward and he was afraid to be alone. Was that really so foreign to them?   
After a long walk in the night the Firbolg found that his feet had led him to the edge of the Unknown Forest. Inside of it was a darkness so thick it could not be penetrated, quite different from the starlit dimness that hovered around the grass outside of it. It radiated hatred and fear - nevertheless, he walked closer. He was just as affected by it as he was before, which was hardly at all, and collapsed against the closest tree and shut his eyes. He was almost within it - he could almost hear the birds, see the light coming through the canopy of the trees.  
“You should not be here!” a voice said to him. He looked up to see the set of red eyes in the woods, distant and impossible to read. Dread settled in his gut.  
“Mm…” he said, “I promise to you I will come no closer. I… did not mean to offend,” he said, but made no movements towards leaving.   
“Wait, I know you -” the voice said, “You’re the Firbolg. You took your friends away before.”  
“... Yes. This was me.”  
There was a pause from the voice in the forest. “Well what - what do you want?” it said anxiously. The Firbolg sighed at that.  
“I am from the forest,” he said, “I wanted only to… be beside it once again. My strength has been… ah… it has been… failing me. My hope was that the magic of the forest would… replenish it,” he explained slowly, looking down at the ground as he said so.  
“Isn’t there another forest, way, way closer to the grounds?”  
“This… is not a forest,” The Firbolg argued. He had been there a few times, and it was artificial to say the least. Birds barely set foot in it, nobody made their home in it. The school did not allow any dangerous animals, which really meant no animals at all. His voice took on a tone of near-bitterness. “This is trees. But it is not a forest.”  
The entity didn’t argue. “Well… it’s dangerous here. You - you shouldn’t be here, it’s not smart…” they persisted softly, but didn’t seem to be all that intent on getting him to leave.   
“You say that it is dangerous,” The Firbolg answered, considering, “Are you in danger?”  
“I’m… irrelevant,” they said, stumbling ever so slightly over the words. “What matters is that no one comes too close. You saw what happened to that pegasus, didn’t you?”  
“Yes,” The Firbolg said, “Very sad.”  
“Very sad indeed.” The voice paused for a moment, before softly posing a question, “What is it that has drained your strength, druid?” they asked.   
“I…” The Firbolg thought about this for a moment, looking down at his hands, “Many things,” he admitted heavily. “Many… small things. People do not understand me and I do not understand… them. For this reason… I am avoided. I am… alone,” he explained, with an ache in his voice. When the entity responded, they seemed to mean what they said, from the bottom of their heart.  
“That’s horrible,” they said.   
“Yes…” The Firbolg agreed, “It has been a pain to me.” He paused for a moment, bringing some levity to the situation, “I will have to learn accounting so I may buy a house in this forest, eh?” he said, and the entity laughed. Gently, charmingly, and most importantly at the right time, they laughed. The Firbolg did what many closed-minded, superstitious students considered impossible - he grinned.   
“You laugh,” he observed.   
“You’re surprised? That was a joke, wasn’t it?”  
“Yes,” he told them, “But the others… they do not laugh. They think that I am very… what is the word… one who does not laugh.”  
“Stoic?”  
He nodded gratefully. “Yes, this is the word, stoic. I have spent many moons learning common and yet when I tell jokes I am… ignored. In accounting, I say that I will share a tree with a squirrel. I say that he will live upstairs. The joke is that trees do not have stairs, yes? The teacher, he says nothing on this. He is only more annoyed.”  
The entity sounded startled at this. “Annoyed?” they asked, “Why annoyed?”  
The Firbolg sighed. “I… was not understanding,” he confessed. “He tells me that I must understand twenty-five thousand. That I must know how the people buy and sell, how one must own more than the rest. Every time I think of it there is a splitting,” he said with a tired wince.   
“Twenty-five thousand? That’s sort of a ridiculous number, what are you going to need twenty-five thousand of?” the entity asked. The Firbolg’s eyes lit up with excitement.   
“This is what I say, he does not listen!” he said, with a gesture of his hand. He looked into the forest, pulling his knees to his chest and staring at the red eyes. “It is good that you understand. Why do you not come out of the forest? Why do you not sit here, with me?”  
The entity stammered at this. “O-oh, no, no I’m afraid that would be quite impossible,” they said, “In fact, you’ve been here too long, you should really go. But it’s been… nice talking to you-”  
“I have no name,” the Firbolg interrupted.  
“A-alright,” they said, confused, “I… didn’t ask for one.”  
“Usually when they say ‘nice talking to you’ they want for you to say your name at the end of it.”  
“Oh,” the entity answered, “Well, as far as I’m concerned that’s not very important. I know you well enough without.”  
The Firbolg smiled, shoulders sinking down, immediately calmed by a belief he recognized as his own. He leaned further against the tree, and made no move to stand up. The entity spoke again.   
“Go on, now. Before they catch you and send you back, alright?” the voice said. The Firbolg nodded, and rose to his feet. He stared into the forest for another moment before he tore himself away, diving back into the dim night.


End file.
